0:00:00Happy new year. Happy new year. We had lots of suggestions written in by
0:00:04Cortexians for suggestions to your theme name, although I'm not really sure why. I feel like it was perfect already. The year of small improvements. I don't know why we would need a suggestion. But I would like to start with the most common, also most nerdy suggestion that we got from listeners, which was the year of Snow Leopard. Oh, yeah, I love that. That's fantastic. S tier name suggestion. Year of Snow Leopard. I really like that.
0:00:34So I feel like year of small improvements bracket Snow Leopard is fine. And for people that are unaware, which should be I expect the majority of listeners, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was a version of Mac OS in 2009 following Mac OS X Leopard because it used to be named after cats. Yeah. The idea of Snow Leopard was this was the no new features release.
0:01:03It's a quality of life improvement.
0:01:04Yeah. However, it wasn't though. And like, that's the thing about Snow Leopard. It's like the dark secret of Snow Leopard is Snow Leopard actually included huge foundational changes to Mac OS X, but they just didn't really promote them to customers.
0:01:18I think the thing about Snow Leopard, which has got to be the most famous, like, I think if you ask most people to name one, that they're going to name Snow Leopard, but it's partly because I do think there's this thing where they did say no new features. But it was really more like, what did the nerds really want and like, create in their mind the like the idea of Snow Leopard is greater than what Snow Leopard actually was.
0:01:43The legend.
0:01:44Yes, the legend.
0:01:46There were no like, customer features.
0:01:49Yeah.
0:01:49But it included a thing called Grand Central Dispatch, which I'm not going to bother getting into today.
0:01:55Yeah, but was not a small addition to the operating system.
0:01:57Absolutely massively important.
0:01:59Yeah, as the name Grand Central Dispatch might imply.
0:02:03Such a good name.
0:02:04It was really no new customer facing features is really what it was. But everyone likes to remember it as, oh, that's the year where they didn't do anything and they just fix stuff.
0:02:12If you're curious, at least to understand, Grand Central Dispatch is basically the underlying technology that would allow for multiple processor cores and for tasks to be handed between them.
0:02:22It's a very oversimplified version of that.
0:02:24But like, if you know anything about the way that computing is done today, you understand how fundamentally important that is.
0:02:30And that was what Snow Leopard included.
0:02:32So like, there is a funny thing of like, you can only really call this the year of Snow Leopard.
0:02:37If I think of like, you know, say about a duck swimming of like, above the water is elegant, but underneath is everything's happening, you know, that's kind of what it would have to be, which I don't.
0:02:47I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
0:02:49This does not feel like a Snow Leopard year for you.
0:02:51So Mike, I've got what it should be in the brackets, right?
0:02:54All right.
0:02:54It's year of small improvements, brackets, the legend of Snow Leopard.
0:03:00Oh, yes.
0:03:01That's the name.
0:03:02Forget everything you know about themes.
0:03:05All right.
0:03:05This is how they are now.
0:03:07Forget the years of work we've established.
0:03:09If it hasn't got an absolutely epic subtitle, what is the point?
0:03:14Yeah.
0:03:15Does that resonate with you, dear listener?
0:03:17Some more serious recommendations is the year of optimizing, the year of refresh, the year of user experience.
0:03:24I kind of like that.
0:03:25But I actually think the year of small improvements really did the job.
0:03:28The year of quality of life, that was not good, right?
0:03:31Like that one is just like, clunky.
0:03:33Year of quality of life was the first thing that had entered my brain.
0:03:38And then I think you can kind of hear it in that episode.
0:03:41I try to explain it as like, it's like a year of small improvements.
0:03:44It was like, no, dude, that's obviously the better name.
0:03:47Like you should just go with that.
0:03:49At this point, I'm completely fine with year of small improvements and I really love it as brackets, the legend of Snow Leopard.
0:03:56Like I could see the movie poster in my head for this year's theme.
0:04:00Absolutely love it.
0:04:02And so here's the thing that I want to try to establish as not a regular, but maybe like a quasi-regular thing for this year.
0:04:12Which is one of the problems I had last year was I kept feeling like, oh man, year of work, like it's this huge thing.
0:04:22And I kept building up a monumental pile of notes of like, oh, these are all the things that I want to talk about for the end of the year, for year of work.
0:04:30It's such a big deal.
0:04:32That it was just like way too much.
0:04:34And so frequently you and I do have this thing where we sort of don't want to talk about the theme in like the second half of the year, because then that can naturally lead into discussions about like, what were the problems or like, what's the next thing?
0:04:47So I want to try to just occasionally have like a small improvement report on the show as just like, hey, as I'm going along, here's an example of like a little small improvement that I made.
0:05:00And the first one I want to start out with is just to me, iconic.
0:05:04This to me is like the perfect example of the kind of thing that I am aiming for.
0:05:08And I know it's always one of Mike's favorite things, a change to my recording setup.
0:05:14One, why would you do it?
0:05:15And two, why'd you tell me?
0:05:16You know, like I don't want to know.
0:05:18I'm happier to not know.
0:05:20Okay.
0:05:20But so look, here is perfect example of the kind of thing that I want to keep my mind open to over the course of the year, right?
0:05:30Look out for what are small annoyances that your brain has just been kind of pushing to the side because it feels like it's below some sort of threshold to even bother dealing with.
0:05:42And the one that I've changed, what I'm so happy with has to do with just the wire that runs from my headphone into the computer.
0:05:52In just the most minor of annoyances, the wire is running as one might expect.
0:05:58It just goes from my headphone across my desk and then back to the laptop, which was on the other side of the desk.
0:06:05I thought, you know what?
0:06:07I hate this.
0:06:07I hate this so much.
0:06:08Like I'll hit it with my hand sometimes or it's just like mildly in the way or it's like slightly constricts my motion because you're just aware like, oh, I don't want to pull this wire.
0:06:15So I just decided to be like, how am I going to solve this?
0:06:18And so all I've done is I rearranged my desk.
0:06:24Basically, I'm running the wire now behind my desk, under the desk, and I bought a little magnetic attachment.
0:06:33So that what I have now is that like right underneath my keyboard in the center of my desk is where the wire ends with a little magnetic attachment.
0:06:42So I can pull it out, plug it into my headphones when we're recording the show, and then I can just put it back and it magnetically connects back under my desk.
0:06:50And now the wire runs in between my hands up to my headphones and is never in the way when I'm recording.
0:06:56And it's like such a small thing, but it's like, ah, love it.
0:07:02This is better. This has less friction.
0:07:04This is just more pleasant.
0:07:06Most wire connectors I've never really liked, but I thought, you know, what would be a nice version of this?
0:07:10There must be little magnetic ones that you can do.
0:07:12It's like, oh, perfect. This is great.
0:07:13So that's the kind of thing where I'm like, ah, this is what I'm looking for.
0:07:18Find these little annoyances, make these small improvements in your life.
0:07:22Think about all the things that you frequently interact with and see how you can make them better.
0:07:26I would say as far as a change to your recording setup can go, you just changing the way your headphones connect, that doesn't bother me.
0:07:34Or that's a you problem, you know, like that only affects you and it doesn't affect me.
0:07:38I mean, that was like pulling on a small thread and it ended with me taking everything out of my office and completely redoing my entire office setup as well to try to make it better.
0:07:54So that's how it started recording on different computers and completely different setups and everything is different as well.
0:07:59But that's how it began small improvement.
0:08:02I feel like if this was a different show, maybe if this was a show that you didn't have a hand in the editing of, this year of small improvements segment would be introed with the sound of a snow leopard roaring.
0:08:15You know, that's what I would do.
0:08:18But I don't think you would allow that.
0:08:21In the essence of a little theme update, I have a little theme update for you.
0:08:25Last time on the show, so for more text subscribers, which is a longer ad free version of the show, we discussed the yearly theme for Cortex brand this year, which is going to be the year of basics.
0:08:37So we kind of decided on that segment.
0:08:40And so far this year, I've done a pretty good job of aligning my year, the year of people and the Cortex brand theme, the year of basics on a project of building the groundwork and putting the pieces in place to create an email newsletter system for Cortex brand.
0:08:57So again, email newsletter plus like email marketing program, I guess would be the two things together.
0:09:03And so far it has been like a four person team effort to find a system that works for us and then also start building the templates for email design, working on copy and like the email flows for people.
0:09:19So it's been a pretty big project so far, but the speed at which it has occurred is because of all of the people involved in it.
0:09:28Like if it was me or just like one person doing it on their own, it wouldn't look as good or be as effective or would have gotten like the work wouldn't have started so quickly.
0:09:37So I'm hoping before the end of January, we'll have started sending stuff.
0:09:43So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it.
0:09:45And it's been a nice thing to see these two themes coming together already that my kind of focus on working with people has enabled for us to start laying the groundwork for something which is kind of so basic for a company like ours, but something we just have not put any focus on until now.
0:10:01Yeah, that's why I like I was in that segment.
0:10:04I was a bit dubious at first about your basics as the theme, but you completely sold me on it.
0:10:09And yes, the get our house in order with regards to the email list really is the most basic of basic starting point for a business that sells stuff on the Internet.
0:10:20Like you said, people were horrified when we would discuss this and be like, so how's your email list?
0:10:25Like email list? We don't have one.
0:10:27Like what are you doing?
0:10:29Most of our friends, Tom and Dan, because we do a show together about like product stuff and businesses and they were mentioning their email list again.
0:10:37And I think Tom said it is the backbone of a business like ours.
0:10:42And I'm sitting there like, oh, God.
0:10:44Oh, really? Oh, is it?
0:10:46But at least we started and they're very, very proud.
0:10:48As Confucius said, the best time to plant an email list is a thousand years ago.
0:10:55And the second best time is now.
0:10:56This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Fitbod.
0:11:00When you want to change your fitness level, it's hard to know where to get started, which is why I'm pleased to let you know that Fitbod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is just for you.
0:11:11Everyone's fitness path is different.
0:11:14It's unique. And that is why Fitbod uses data to make sure they customize everything to suit you perfectly.
0:11:20Adapting as you improve so every workout will remain challenging, pushing you to make the progress that you want.
0:11:28Superior results are achieved when a workout program is tailored to your unique body experience, environment and goals.
0:11:34All of this information is stored in your Fitbod gym profile.
0:11:38Fitbod tracks your muscle recovery so you're able to avoid burnout while keeping up your momentum.
0:11:43And it builds your best possible workout by combining AI with exercise science.
0:11:48They've analyzed billions of data points that have been fine tuned by certified personal trainers.
0:11:54And you can be sure you're learning new movements the right way thanks to more than 1000 demonstration videos.
0:12:00I love the videos.
0:12:01It really helps me like when I'm using Fitbod and it's like, hey, you've got something new, which is frequent because they like to keep things mixed up and fresh.
0:12:07I'm able to watch videos on how each exercise is performed along with reading the instructions.
0:12:12And I feel 100 percent confident that I'm going to be doing it the right way.
0:12:16Muscles improve when working in concert with the entire musculoskeletal system.
0:12:21So overworking some muscles while underworking others, you can negatively impact results this way.
0:12:26This is why Fitbod tracks your muscle fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine.
0:12:32You're never going to get bored because they're mixing things up with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets and circuits whilst also keeping your body sharp.
0:12:40The Fitbod app is super easy to use and it looks great.
0:12:43You can stay informed with Fitbod's progress tracking charts, their weekly reports and sharing cards,
0:12:48which lets you keep track of your achievements, personal bests and to share them easily with friends and family.
0:12:53It also integrates with your Apple Watch, Wear it with SmartWatch and apps like Strava, Fitbit and Apple Health.
0:12:59Personalized training of this quality can be expensive, but Fitbod is just twelve ninety nine a month or seventy nine ninety nine a year.
0:13:06But you can get an awesome twenty five percent off your membership when you sign up today at Fitbod.me/Cortex.
0:13:12That is a huge discount on the annual plan.
0:13:15So go now and get your customized fitness plan at Fitbod.me/Cortex.
0:13:19Once again, that is F I T B O D dot me slash cortex for twenty five percent of your membership.
0:13:25Our thanks to Fitbod for their continued support of this show and Relay FM.
0:13:29OK, Mike, I cannot wait any longer.
0:13:32I need to know how was school today?
0:13:35Well, school ended a little while ago.
0:13:38OK.
0:13:38And before Christmas, but school was very good.
0:13:41Today, I got my certificate e-mail.
0:13:43Which was a funny it was very funny to get my hey, you completed your course certificate the day that we were going to talk about it.
0:13:51Oh, it's graduation day, basically.
0:13:52Yeah, I graduated today considering the course was completed like four weeks ago.
0:13:56That is kind of funny that they chose today, but they did choose today.
0:13:59So, yeah, I graduated from my short course on product design.
0:14:03I don't even know what was the basic structure of what it was that you were doing.
0:14:09It was a week long course, right?
0:14:10Like full days, half days.
0:14:12Five days, 10 to four.
0:14:14Five days, 10 to four.
0:14:16Single instructor?
0:14:17Single instructor, a group of five students.
0:14:20Oh, OK.
0:14:20Very good student to teacher ratio.
0:14:23Yeah, that was actually really helpful.
0:14:24It was, yeah, in person at University of the Arts London College.
0:14:31They have like a variety of short courses that they do.
0:14:36And my experience of feeling like I was going back to school started immediately.
0:14:41So you arrive at the college and you go to like the enrollment desk and they're like,
0:14:47all right, go into the main hall and there are pieces of paper on the wall with all of
0:14:53the names of the short courses you need to line up at the name of your course.
0:14:58So you go into this big hall and there's all these people just like standing around in
0:15:03loosely formed lines.
0:15:04Right, right.
0:15:05And like I get into a line and I'm like, I don't know if I'm in the right line because
0:15:09like I can see my course on the wall, but there's like 20 people in front of me and
0:15:14they all look like they're in different lines.
0:15:16The quintessential first day of school experience.
0:15:20I feel a little lost.
0:15:22Yes.
0:15:22And I'm also being physically sorted with a large number of people as I'm being processed
0:15:28by the education system.
0:15:29And immediately for me, taken back to my school experience, I'm too nervous to ask.
0:15:33Yeah, you don't want to ask.
0:15:34You don't want to embarrass yourself because then all the cool kids will laugh at you.
0:15:37Yeah.
0:15:37Yep. So I would just be waiting to be sorted.
0:15:40Yeah.
0:15:40And so, yeah, I was in the right line and we were taken to the class.
0:15:44And so the structure was, you know, we had like five days.
0:15:47It's not like a ton of time.
0:15:48And essentially it was we're going to kind of dip our toes into what a bigger course
0:15:56around product design could look like.
0:15:58Right.
0:16:00That's kind of what you're doing here.
0:16:01And of the people that were there, there was me.
0:16:03There were two people that worked for like businesses who were sending their employees
0:16:07on these.
0:16:07Right. So it's like employee training.
0:16:09Training or like expanded learning kind of thing.
0:16:11Like, you know, one was it was like considered training for this person.
0:16:15The other, it was like it seemed like that company allowed people to just pick
0:16:18something.
0:16:19It's very tech company-y.
0:16:21You know, you can do whatever you want with your 20 percent time.
0:16:24Yeah, it's totally up to you.
0:16:25And we'll pay for it.
0:16:25We just want to make you more rounded.
0:16:27And then the other two people were in between degrees.
0:16:33So they'd been studying and they wanted to do something now in design.
0:16:38And so they were like doing taster sessions, basically of different courses.
0:16:42And it felt like really that's what this is for.
0:16:45Like a survey experience.
0:16:46Yeah. That like somebody can go around, pay a relatively small amount of money compared
0:16:51to what a course would be and get an idea as to whether they might want to enroll in
0:16:56like a full three year course at the university.
0:17:00OK.
0:17:01Our instructor, what he does now is instructing, but he had a history in
0:17:06furniture design.
0:17:07And day one was mostly like, let's talk about what design is.
0:17:15So like different forms of industrial design and product design, different
0:17:21thinking.
0:17:22And also the instructor was kind of sharing some of his influences and like the people
0:17:26that he draws interest from as like a way to kind of like set up.
0:17:31And on that day, actually, we started doing like technical drawing.
0:17:36Did you have a triangle in your hand and a grid piece of paper in front of you?
0:17:41His thing was not to try and be too precise of it.
0:17:43Like get a grid paper, draw between these two points and try and draw something.
0:17:48We're drawing a chair that day just for practice sake, like in that kind of like
0:17:53isometric style.
0:17:54Right. Like how can you imagine this?
0:17:56And that was like that first day was to try and get us used to the idea of imagining an
0:18:02object in 3D.
0:18:03Right. So like you can imagine what a chair looks like, but how would that chair look
0:18:07like from the top?
0:18:09How would it look like from the bottom?
0:18:10And we were kind of like playing around with that because it would inform us for the
0:18:15next day's work.
0:18:16So, yeah, then we went on to like coming up with the concept of a product, imagining
0:18:21what it could look like, trying to draw it out in a technical style.
0:18:24Then we were doing storyboarding, which was in essence like show how this product could
0:18:30be used. Like what is the story of this item?
0:18:33Why does it exist?
0:18:34We're kind of like playing around with that and drawing some of these out.
0:18:37And then we did a lot of these kinds of things whilst also having mini lectures around
0:18:44like the types of ways that products are made, how something can be made would inform
0:18:50your design of it.
0:18:51And then the last two days was kind of bringing everything together to create a light.
0:18:57It was like create a product that emits light in some way.
0:19:00You can make a lamp or whatever.
0:19:02And you had to come up with an idea, come up with a new reason for existing and be able
0:19:08to explain that, do some technical drawing and then make a model.
0:19:11And we made a model out of card.
0:19:13Mine was a little light, a little working light that looked like an egg timer.
0:19:19And you would turn the timer and it would start glowing red at the top to try and indicate
0:19:25to people that you're working.
0:19:26But of course, gray is also a time tracker because that's the only way I could imagine.
0:19:30The lens through which you view all products.
0:19:33Yes.
0:19:33It tracks your time for you.
0:19:35And so that was just like a little thing.
0:19:37And we built it and I wanted to build something that had like in my mind some kind of
0:19:40element of tactility and like a little egg timer, like the form of an egg timer was kind
0:19:45of cute.
0:19:45So that was like overall what it was focused on.
0:19:49But the main things that I took away from it was around kind of space and distraction
0:19:57when trying to imagine designing products.
0:20:02What do you mean?
0:20:03So I had no cell coverage in the classroom.
0:20:08My phone couldn't connect to 5G.
0:20:11And so on day one, I kind of was like, OK, so I can't connect.
0:20:17Then on day two, I know that people were on the Wi-Fi, but I was like, I'm not going to
0:20:23connect to the Wi-Fi.
0:20:24And so I could only be online at lunch and then at the end of the day, which meant that,
0:20:33you know, I would surface for air two times a day and my phone would be like blowing up.
0:20:39But I really valued this in allowing me to have like space to think and like distraction
0:20:49taken away so I could really get involved in what I was doing, because like a lot of
0:20:59the time, the things that we were doing had a lot of like concept work involved in it.
0:21:07We had to come up with concepts and like sketch them out and like, how would this work?
0:21:11How would this not work?
0:21:12And you're kind of it's a lot of iteration and being able to be distraction free in that
0:21:20work was very beneficial, I think.
0:21:23And so I think it has informed for me that I need to try and replicate this where
0:21:32possible, which is complicated.
0:21:36And I'm not sure I know what the answer to that is right now, but it's something I'm
0:21:41working on.
0:21:41The first thing that I've taken away is I am trying now to focus on Thursdays are free
0:21:52for cortex.
0:21:53So we record on Thursdays.
0:21:56Right.
0:21:56Which is one help.
0:21:58So like typically in the past, I've tried to keep Thursdays more free in case we need
0:22:03to move the recording date.
0:22:04So I don't want to like smash up too much stuff into trying to record the show.
0:22:08But now what I'm going to try and do is on the Thursdays, we're not recording to try
0:22:14and leave those for like bigger cortex brand projects.
0:22:17Right.
0:22:18OK.
0:22:18Like if I'm noodling on an idea for something, you know, if I find time during the
0:22:24week, I can like poke at it if I have the time.
0:22:26But otherwise I would know that I would be able to try and spend a bunch of time on it
0:22:30the next Thursday, whatever it would be.
0:22:33That's like one part of it.
0:22:34And then I'm going to try and see if this works and maybe adapt it a little further in
0:22:38the idea of giving myself time to experiment and to play around and take in
0:22:46information, take in inspiration, like that kind of stuff and give myself more space in
0:22:52my work to do that.
0:22:54But also to have dedicated physical space to do this work.
0:23:01So I'm looking at making a bunch of changes to Mega Studio.
0:23:05One of them will be I'm going to get like a table that that's just where all the design
0:23:10stuff goes.
0:23:11Oh, right.
0:23:12Yeah.
0:23:12Because you don't really have a clear table right now.
0:23:15I'm just trying to think about the office.
0:23:17You've got what I think was like your keyboard table, even though I know that's not
0:23:20exactly right, but it feels like you've got that one table that always has keyboard stuff
0:23:24on it.
0:23:24Then you have your recording set up.
0:23:25Yeah.
0:23:25But neither of those have like a big...
0:23:27There's not a big space.
0:23:28It's not an empty space.
0:23:29Like the table that you're thinking of is my keyboard table.
0:23:32It is a very large desk that's kind of split in half.
0:23:35And one half is my PC, which has my streaming stuff and then also my keyboard hobby
0:23:39projects.
0:23:40The other half is where I actually sit all day when I'm not recording.
0:23:43But they of course, there's always a fancy keyboard on it.
0:23:46So maybe it can all blend in to one.
0:23:48But that's my main desk.
0:23:49And it is at the moment where I would try and push stuff away and have space.
0:23:54But that's not really what I want.
0:23:57And so this would be a desk which would be like, you know, covered in the relevant
0:24:01things that I would need.
0:24:03I'm like prototyping and like workshopping a different paper layout for the Sidekick
0:24:08Notepad, like to do another version of it.
0:24:10Like, so it's not just the dot grid.
0:24:12It's just some other stuff.
0:24:13And when I've done things like this before, I've kind of just like sketched them out a
0:24:20little bit.
0:24:21But this time I was like cutting out pieces of paper and moving them around and
0:24:27trying to come up with a layout that way.
0:24:28And that felt a little bit more tactile in a way that I enjoyed.
0:24:31And that was something I took away from this course was the like kind of cutting stuff
0:24:37out, moving it around, like having a kind of tactility in it felt more exciting and
0:24:43engaging for me than trying to just draw boxes on a piece of paper.
0:24:48I feel like I'm having the realization of the images that you sent me of the design
0:24:53changes that you were thinking about.
0:24:55It was made out of these little modular pieces.
0:24:58And I'm just realizing that's not something that I've seen you do before.
0:25:02But I also think it just made so much sense.
0:25:05Not that I really thought about it, but if I had to think about it, I would have said
0:25:07like, oh, this must be Mike just in the early stages.
0:25:10And then the stuff that he's shown me before is the later stages where he's just
0:25:13drawing it out on paper.
0:25:14But no, that does intuitively make way more sense as a good early stage thing is let me
0:25:20cut out physically the pieces that I might want to assemble something out of because
0:25:25moving things around tangibly, especially for the Cortex products, really matters.
0:25:31It's interesting.
0:25:32It was just something that I didn't really know that I liked until I was doing some of
0:25:37the prototyping stuff in the last couple of days where cutting things out of card and
0:25:41like moving them around and trying out different layouts and stuff.
0:25:45It was just like really interesting to me.
0:25:47So I brought that in too.
0:25:48So I can imagine having this like kind of the way I think about it is like time and
0:25:54space are the things that I need.
0:25:56And so trying to create and find that I think will be better overall for my aspirations
0:26:05and things that I want to do in product design.
0:26:09Yeah, we may talk about this later, but I think as Cortex brand becomes a bigger and
0:26:13bigger thing, I hadn't really thought about it before.
0:26:16But yeah, it does make sense that you would really need a separate physical design space
0:26:22so that it's not like, oh, I'm just incidentally doing this design work on this table full
0:26:26of keyboards and other things.
0:26:28It's like, no, no, this is like a dedicated space.
0:26:30It feels like I'm not respecting the work.
0:26:32I'm just trying to always just squeeze it in.
0:26:35Squeeze it in.
0:26:35Yeah, yeah.
0:26:36That's exactly what it feels like.
0:26:37Yeah.
0:26:37Both in my day and in the physical space, it feels like I'm not valuing it.
0:26:44And so I want to be able to give it a little bit more room to breathe in.
0:26:49I mean, also it seems half unintentional and half intentional with the no cell phone service
0:26:54and then deciding not to join the Wi-Fi.
0:26:56I was very aware of it and I was kind of thinking of it in terms of your year of people
0:27:00because we had this conversation in the last episode about how you train people how to
0:27:06respond to you based on how quickly you get back to them.
0:27:09And I think there was some part of me which kind of forgot that you were in school, but I
0:27:14was very aware.
0:27:15Like I would send you a message and it's like, wait, it's been two minutes.
0:27:19Mike hasn't gotten back to me.
0:27:21Like, this is unacceptable.
0:27:22It's like, I knew you were at school, but I think there was some part of my brain which
0:27:26defaulted to thinking like, oh, Mike's running his year of people on me, right?
0:27:31Like he's trying to train me that I don't always get an immediate response.
0:27:35But actually, no, you were just busy with design work.
0:27:37Hang on a minute.
0:27:38I count in this too?
0:27:39Yeah, I was doing the thing everybody does.
0:27:41Oh, yeah, yeah.
0:27:42Mike's not going to get back to other people as fast, but surely he still means me is going
0:27:48to get instant replies.
0:27:50To me, I don't think that it would be truly realistic to be like, all right, turning off
0:27:56the Wi-Fi.
0:27:57Like that doesn't make sense to me.
0:27:58I don't think I don't think that would ultimately make me happy on a longer period.
0:28:02But the biggest question that I am left with having done this experience is do I want
0:28:09more?
0:28:10Because what I'll say is overall, I loved doing this.
0:28:15Really?
0:28:16OK.
0:28:16Yes, I loved being immersed in an environment where everyone is just talking about design.
0:28:25Like I loved so much just being immersed in this world where all anybody is talking about
0:28:34is like, what is the intention of the object?
0:28:37All that matters right now is you're trying to understand what the thing that you want
0:28:44to make would say to the user.
0:28:46Like, does it have a point?
0:28:48Does it have a reason for existing at these kinds of questions?
0:28:51I just loved being in an environment where everyone was totally on board with asking
0:28:56that and nobody was like, what are you talking about?
0:28:59Like, you know, in that environment, like the most important thing.
0:29:04But realistically, they don't seem to be that way on a grand stage.
0:29:10But I am of the opinion that these things are really important, but you're not always
0:29:16within company who agrees with you.
0:29:18Right?
0:29:19OK.
0:29:20Yeah.
0:29:21This is kind of the dynamic of someone from outside of this sphere would say something
0:29:27like, oh, you guys are overthinking this.
0:29:30Yeah.
0:29:30And the correct thing here is like, oh, no, but the designer should think about this quite
0:29:37a lot, actually, and this conversation will seem like overthinking to an outsider.
0:29:45Almost perversely, the more successful the design is, the design should seem really
0:29:52intuitive for whatever it is or it should be like obvious.
0:29:54Oh, this thing just works.
0:29:55Like what I was thinking is in school, school at its best provides a kind of structured
0:30:04camaraderie and maybe that's what this was is like.
0:30:07It's selected for people who really care about this thing on this course.
0:30:12And so then when you are with them, you can feel like, ah, we all have the same kind of
0:30:17purpose, which is in designing and critiquing design of objects in a way that we don't
0:30:23have to worry about if we were having this discussion at a random dinner party, like how
0:30:28entertained are the other people or do other people think this is boring kind of thing?
0:30:32It's funny that you said, I never really thought of it that way, but like I have like
0:30:35multiple shows that I do, which that is it, right?
0:30:39Like the idea of you're with people and you just want to talk about objects and like how
0:30:43much you care about them and what they do or not do.
0:30:46Like I love that kind of thing.
0:30:47But being in that environment for that week, like I left it and I just want more.
0:30:53And so like when I left it, I'm like, all right, I think I want to go to university.
0:30:58Like that's how I left the course of like, I want to do a course like I want to go and do
0:31:04a three year course on product design for the sake of learning.
0:31:09Like I don't care about a degree.
0:31:12Like I care about learning, I want to learn more about this.
0:31:19I want to be in this environment, learning from other people, having the experience of
0:31:26taking in a body of work and broadening my thinking, what I feel like I could achieve,
0:31:35what I could be capable of.
0:31:37But the problem is the amount of change that would need to occur in my life to do this
0:31:43would be massive.
0:31:45So if I really genuinely want to do this, I have to be way more sure of it than I am
0:31:51currently.
0:31:52And so the easiest way to achieve it is to do more short courses.
0:31:57And that's something that like I want to do this year.
0:32:00I just need to find courses that I'm interested in.
0:32:03University of the Arts have more, but some of them are on Zoom and I don't want that.
0:32:10No, no, it's a disaster.
0:32:11Because that's not what I want, because the Zoom courses are like way longer and it's like
0:32:17an hour a week or something and you do it for like 12 weeks.
0:32:20That's not what I'm looking for.
0:32:22Because that feels like you do that in the sense of getting the like thing at the end of
0:32:27it, like I've completed this course and that's not what I care about.
0:32:30What I want is what I was talking about, being in an environment which is like focused
0:32:35around that one thing.
0:32:37That's what people care about for the week that they're there is what is their lamp going
0:32:42to look like at the end of this week?
0:32:44You know, like that's kind of what I care about.
0:32:47But like, I just don't know if I am ready to commit to that.
0:32:50And so what I have my eyes out for right now is what are the other ways in my life that I
0:32:58can get this experience, this expertise from people?
0:33:05I don't have an answer for this.
0:33:07All I know is I have a desire for more learning.
0:33:11Yeah, the problem there is like how contingent is this on people?
0:33:16And given that this is year of people, I'm imagining quite high.
0:33:19And that's also why I was saying like school at its best provides this kind of camaraderie
0:33:24that can be difficult to replicate.
0:33:26The thing that I was just wondering is I was wondering if this school or other schools
0:33:32in the UK do something like what I had in university, which were summer sessions and
0:33:37intercessions, which are just like compressed classes where they take a whole semester's
0:33:41worth of thing and they squeeze it down to three weeks instead.
0:33:46And it's not like a survey class.
0:33:49It really would be.
0:33:50This is the actual class.
0:33:52We're just doing a kind of pseudo term in between the regular terms for weirdos, for
0:33:58example, who are trying to do two degrees simultaneously.
0:34:01Well, that is like so when the short course that I was on, the school was closed, like
0:34:06they put them on.
0:34:07Yeah, exactly.
0:34:08The school is otherwise closed.
0:34:10So like for me, it was during the Christmas break.
0:34:12Right.
0:34:12Yeah.
0:34:13But I've yet to find in my admittedly somewhat limited search chain because I've just been
0:34:19looking at like London schools right now.
0:34:21Anything more than what I've done?
0:34:24Yeah, I would take a look around and see if you can find something like you might need to
0:34:29find a place that has something that's more like a campus.
0:34:31But I would just be surprised if you couldn't find these like summer session or intersession
0:34:36kind of things.
0:34:37And my experience was always like those are the maximum like bang per hour by far of any
0:34:44kind of thing that you're going to do.
0:34:45Even just for the fact that like what you were doing, where you're going in every day for
0:34:50five hours, the amount of fat that that trims from just the time of like, oh, we're booting
0:34:56up.
0:34:56What did we do last week?
0:34:58What are we going to do?
0:34:58Like all of that kind of nonsense is just naturally removed when you're there every day
0:35:04for a big block of time.
0:35:05So like going to sort of a regular design school, I think is not really practical in your
0:35:12foreseeable life in the near future.
0:35:15But I could see that you could arrange something to be able to take like three weeks to do a
0:35:22compressed course.
0:35:22Like that might be possible as a next step if you can find the right thing.
0:35:25Oh, I believe that would be possible.
0:35:27Like it would be a busier time.
0:35:28Like during that week, I didn't record any shows, right?
0:35:31But if I'm doing a three week course, I'm going to have to lose some stuff.
0:35:35I'm not going to be able to do nothing.
0:35:37I think I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
0:35:39I would have to work a reduced schedule.
0:35:42I've just yet to find another course that I think would be interesting for me.
0:35:49On a broad scale, what do you feel like you want to get out of these courses or what do
0:35:56you think that they do for you that makes them worth the investment of time?
0:35:59I think that and I know I felt this way from this one and I would hope I would continue
0:36:04to feel that way.
0:36:05It makes things that seem impossible feel more possible.
0:36:11Like what do you feel that you can do now that you couldn't do before the course?
0:36:14It's like technique.
0:36:15OK.
0:36:16Helping me kind of open up my brain a little bit.
0:36:20I know from one week, I know I have not gained enough skill in which I feel like I
0:36:26could make something out of wood, say, or design something out of metal.
0:36:33But it started to show me how I could build the skill needed.
0:36:40Right.
0:36:41So I feel like it took down a wall to make something that felt completely insurmountable,
0:36:48more surmountable.
0:36:49Like I believe that I could learn the skills to be able to take something from my brain
0:36:55and be able to better explain it to someone, which is kind of what the whole point of this
0:37:01was for me, right, just to better give me the confidence to be able to sit in a room
0:37:06with people and explain what I'm looking for.
0:37:08And I feel like I got that out of this.
0:37:10And I feel like it's shown me that if I was to take more of this, like if I was to do
0:37:15longer or more of this kind of stuff, it would further unlock or remove barriers that
0:37:24I'm putting up in my mind of stopping me from being able to do what I'm looking to
0:37:28achieve.
0:37:29Right.
0:37:29Like it takes down some barriers and it makes me feel like these things are more in
0:37:33reach.
0:37:33Not to discourage you in the slightest, but like you said right there is the thing, like
0:37:38it's a barrier in your own mind maybe because you didn't go to paper design school to
0:37:45design the first notebooks.
0:37:47No.
0:37:47Is it the fact that, oh, you don't know how to design anything in wood or communicate
0:37:51with wood manufacturers because we don't have a wood based product that is in the
0:37:56forefront of our mind of like, oh, that's a thing that we need to make.
0:37:58I understand where you're coming from.
0:37:59I think that there is some truth to what you're saying, but I do feel that there is
0:38:03like a level of knowledge, expertise, inspiration and genuinely technical skills
0:38:10that would be needed to go further that I can more easily pick up if I was taught
0:38:16them.
0:38:16Okay.
0:38:17Yeah.
0:38:17Yeah.
0:38:18Like at a certain point to be able to express what I'm looking for, I need to have a
0:38:23little bit of 3D modeling experience.
0:38:25Like it would go a long way to helping me be able to prototype something to be able
0:38:34to model it in 3D.
0:38:35At some point I believe that that is going to be important, but I don't know what for.
0:38:39Okay.
0:38:40But there is genuinely just like a confidence building that comes from stuff
0:38:44like this, which I think for me would be very important.
0:38:48Because I know I left it feeling real good.
0:38:51Like I left this course feeling like, you know what?
0:38:56I can't do this.
0:38:57And it's like that is maybe something I've not truly felt until then.
0:39:04Like being in that environment and talking to people about the stuff that we make and
0:39:11working on new ideas and having those ideas praised by peers.
0:39:16And it was like, oh, okay.
0:39:17Like I feel like I have something like I can build this.
0:39:22I can grow from here.
0:39:24Like it was very valuable.
0:39:26And I feel like that kind of environment is important as well as learning the things
0:39:31that I might want to learn from these experiences.
0:39:35So.
0:39:35I have one final question though.
0:39:36Okay.
0:39:37Did they know who you are?
0:39:39Did they know who's in this class?
0:39:42Did they know that it's the Mike Hurley?
0:39:44Nobody gave the impression that they had heard of me.
0:39:47Okay.
0:39:48But just naturally throughout the course of the week, the mood in the room changed.
0:39:54Okay.
0:39:55There is an element of like, what do you do?
0:39:58Yeah, well, of course.
0:40:00Of course.
0:40:00I was not going to bring it up.
0:40:02Right.
0:40:02Yeah, of course.
0:40:03Of course.
0:40:03But I was just answering questions honestly.
0:40:07Like when people say, why are you here?
0:40:09It's like, well, I started a business making paper products and I want to get more
0:40:16expertise and more knowledge to help me further make more stuff and feel more
0:40:20confident.
0:40:20Then that would later turn into like, well, what are you making?
0:40:23I'd be like, well, I'm using one of them right now.
0:40:26Like I had a sidekick taking my notes on, you know, people were talking about that.
0:40:30They were interested in it.
0:40:31And then, you know, you'd be like working away.
0:40:34And you know, I'd said that I was podcasting and people would ask me like, what are
0:40:37your podcasts about?
0:40:38Like I'd explained that.
0:40:39And then the next day as we go on, like someone would say to me, like, how many
0:40:44listeners do you have?
0:40:45Or like, how many of those notepads have you sold?
0:40:48Like, and so like, I was not offering this information.
0:40:54This is why I was, I was wanting to know, because the problem is if you open this
0:40:56door, the tiniest amount, if you made the decision of I'm not willing to go in here
0:41:02and be extremely obfuscatious about what it is that I actually do, that door is
0:41:07going to fly open the moment the first questions start getting asked.
0:41:11So that's what I was curious about.
0:41:12But it was like, you know, there was somebody who worked for an airline and
0:41:17they worked in design at this airline, like physical design inside of the planes.
0:41:20I would not stop asking them questions.
0:41:23I just thought this person's job was fascinating.
0:41:25And so like, I was asking him questions constantly throughout the week because he
0:41:31was a super nice guy and he was very forthcoming and like seemed really like
0:41:34passionate about his work.
0:41:36And I just found that super interesting.
0:41:38So I think that there was an element of that from a couple of people in the class.
0:41:41It was just one of those things where it was just, who is this person?
0:41:45Then things start to be revealed that it's like, oh, I actually, we've sold lots of
0:41:51these and like people really liked them.
0:41:52And like the questions just kept going.
0:41:55But it was really interesting.
0:41:56Like people had like really cool questions for me and stuff like that.
0:41:59But yeah, it was one of those things that from Monday to Friday, different vibes.
0:42:05The vibes were different.
0:42:06This episode of Cortex is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform for
0:42:12building your brand and growing your business online.
0:42:14You could stand out from the crowd of a beautiful website, engage directly with
0:42:18your audience and sell your products, services, and even the content that you
0:42:22create.
0:42:23Squarespace has got everything you need all in one place.
0:42:26With Squarespace, you can take advantage of a professionally designed website
0:42:30template to help you get started with your new website.
0:42:32They have designs that are tailored for every category and use case.
0:42:36You can very easily customize the look of these, update the content and add features
0:42:41to fit the unique needs of your website, your business, what you're looking to make.
0:42:44But you can make Squarespace's templates do whatever you want.
0:42:47So your idea, brand or business will stand out on every device is incredibly
0:42:52customizable, especially with their new reimagined drag and drop technology
0:42:56called fluid engine, which is built for desktop or mobile.
0:42:59So you can build and customize your website wherever you want.
0:43:03And if what you want your website to have as an online store, it's super easy with
0:43:07Squarespace.
0:43:08They have all of the tools that you need to start selling online, whether you're
0:43:11selling physical or digital goods.
0:43:13If you have a website of your own, you want to know how people are finding it.
0:43:17You want to know how many visitors you've got.
0:43:19You want to be able to keep track of that again, especially if you're selling
0:43:21something like how do you know what products are successful?
0:43:24Well, all of this is also built in with Squarespace with their analytics system.
0:43:28This will let you understand where your site visitors are coming from, where your
0:43:31sales are coming from and let you analyze which channels are most effective for you.
0:43:35This will allow you to improve your website and build a marketing strategy
0:43:38based on your top keywords or most popular products and content.
0:43:41I have been a fan of Squarespace, a user of Squarespace for over a decade now.
0:43:46When I have something I want to put online, they are the first place that I go.
0:43:49They make it so simple.
0:43:50It looks so professional, so much better than I could ever do if I was trying to
0:43:54build on my own.
0:43:55Honestly, I probably would just give up, which is not what you want when you have a
0:43:58new idea, when you have a new project, you don't want things to get in your way.
0:44:01Squarespace lets you build that beautiful website that you've been dreaming of and
0:44:05put it out to the world to let your project sing.
0:44:08So go today and check out Squarespace.com/cortex.
0:44:12You can sign up for a free trial.
0:44:13And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com/cortex and use the code
0:44:18Cortex to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain.
0:44:22That is Squarespace.com/cortex and the code Cortex.
0:44:26When you decide to sign up, you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your
0:44:30support for the show.
0:44:31Our thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of
0:44:35Real AFM.
0:44:36In our State of the Apps episodes over the last couple of years, a lot of time has
0:44:41been spent talking about Slack and like trying to make Slack better for us.
0:44:46Yeah.
0:44:47I saw an article on The Verge about a new feature in Slack called Catch Up.
0:44:55Even just mentioning Slack and talking about making it better, I mean like PTSD,
0:45:00going back to that conversation about the Slack redesign and this whole palace of
0:45:05pain for these team communication apps.
0:45:08That's just so horrible to deal with.
0:45:10And so when you say like, Oh, they have a new feature.
0:45:13I just do not greet this with a positive emotional experience.
0:45:17Like, Oh, I can't wait to see what they've unveiled.
0:45:19It's a physical tightening in my chest of, Oh no, how is this going to get worse for
0:45:24me?
0:45:25I want you to bear with me for a minute here.
0:45:27Right.
0:45:28Because like there is an initial reaction, which I think you had.
0:45:31And I think there is also a secondary reaction.
0:45:33Oh boy.
0:45:34The best way to do this is just to read to you the beginning of this article from
0:45:38friend of the show, David Pierce, who says, "Slack is adding a new feature to its
0:45:43mobile app meant to help you triage all of your unread stuff a little faster.
0:45:48It's called Catch Up.
0:45:50And the only way I can describe it is Tinder for enterprise messaging."
0:45:54Ah, just please wait.
0:45:56"When you tap on Catch Up at the top of the app's home screen, it will show you one
0:46:01channel or DM at a time.
0:46:03Swipe left to mark it red, right to leave it unread."
0:46:07So I feel like maybe you're going on a similar journey to me right now.
0:46:15But my initial reaction was, why are you doing this to me?
0:46:21But then I started thinking about my Slack style.
0:46:24And like typically, you know, I'm at Open Slack and I have like two DMs and three
0:46:30channels that have got unread messages in.
0:46:32And the way that I find that, because I'm in some Slacks with lots of channels, it's
0:46:36just it's like that little thing that's like there's unread messages down there.
0:46:39And you have to scroll, scroll, scroll.
0:46:41Oh, there it is.
0:46:42And you hit it.
0:46:43Now, what this would do is would allow me to every time I open Slack, just very
0:46:50quickly see everything that has got unread content within it.
0:46:54And then I can either read it and be like, OK, whatever.
0:46:59Or I can keep it unread to deal with later on.
0:47:03I actually think the idea behind this feature, which I have not used yet, because
0:47:08as Slack do do these things, which is weird, it is rolling out to free Slacks first.
0:47:13Oh, great. Paid Slacks later.
0:47:15I can see myself using this feature.
0:47:18And what they've said is this is going to be on the phone.
0:47:22This is a phone feature.
0:47:23Right.
0:47:24I think because they said like what they have noticed is that people use the Slack
0:47:30phone app as like a triage.
0:47:31You know, they wake up in the morning or it's later in the day and they just want to
0:47:35very quickly see what's going on and deal with it later on.
0:47:37Again, what I want, which they don't seem to have done and I don't think they'll ever
0:47:43do, I want this feature.
0:47:44But for every Slack, like collapse all the Slacks, right, and give me this for one view
0:47:50every Slack that I'm in.
0:47:51So I haven't got to keep like swipe tap, swipe tap.
0:47:54So this is a thing where like at first I'm like, oh, God, why?
0:48:00And then the more I think about it, I'm like, this might make my life a little easier.
0:48:05I'm deeply unconvinced by this.
0:48:08I don't like this.
0:48:09OK.
0:48:09I have a specific dislike and a broad dislike.
0:48:12My broad dislike is we've discussed the TikTok-ification of everything on the show
0:48:18before that this is like a kind of natural attractor for a lot of apps to go in the
0:48:25direction of being more like TikTok.
0:48:27And I think that there are several natural attractors like that for user interfaces,
0:48:34which are mostly bad.
0:48:35And I don't think we've ever discussed it, but I have in my head the same idea of like
0:48:41the Tinder-ification of things.
0:48:43So it's really horrifying because like I don't use any app that is Tinder-like, but I
0:48:47can still see this is a user behavior or user experience that spreads.
0:48:54It's like an ICE9.
0:48:55Like once it's introduced, you cannot get rid of it and it just continues to spread.
0:48:59So it's, I have a real visceral reaction to, oh, what if we put some Tinder in our Slack?
0:49:06It's like, oh, it's like the reason that this user interaction spreads
0:49:11is not because it's great.
0:49:13It's because it's like hooking into something in people's brains, which is not quite the same.
0:49:19So I just like on a very broad level, I don't like it in the same way that if Slack was
0:49:26introducing some feature that they had borrowed from TikTok, be like on average, I think
0:49:30that's going to be bad.
0:49:32It's not going to be good.
0:49:34Even if on Slack's end, they're like, oh, look at whatever metric we care about.
0:49:39It's gone up.
0:49:39Like, yeah, you can get the metric to go up and things to still be bad.
0:49:44I think my thing on it is like, I could see it being interesting and I can see myself using it.
0:49:49But what it highlights to me is a continued proof that there's problems that they are unable to fix.
0:49:57That like, this is just another user interface to try and deal with the problem that is the ever-growing Slack.
0:50:07Yeah.
0:50:09Which is like a systemic fundamental issue that they can't deal with probably, right?
0:50:15Like it's too late now, but is so funny to consider when you think about it was created as the idea of like,
0:50:23we're going to replace email because email is too unmanageable and they've just created a second unmanageable system.
0:50:29Yeah, I know.
0:50:30But that's again, that's why all of the like corporate communication apps, like they all exist in this palace of pain
0:50:37where they just recreate the very problems that they're trying to solve because multiple people working together
0:50:44and trying to communicate, there are just some unsolvable problems here that you cannot ever really properly deal with them.
0:50:51You can only seem to have pseudo-solved them by moving to a new thing that is smaller.
0:51:00And so while it is smaller, you feel like, oh, what a relief, like this is great, but it will just grow.
0:51:06And then it reintroduces those problems.
0:51:08Yeah.
0:51:08My second issue with this, again, it depends on like some of the exact details, but I also, I feel like for me personally,
0:51:15this actually encourages the worst behavior for me admin wise.
0:51:23I just think that it's a very bad pattern.
0:51:26I do this with email.
0:51:27I do this with lots of things with notifications.
0:51:30I do this with iMessage too much where you like see some things, don't respond to a bunch of things and mark things unread.
0:51:38Okay.
0:51:38Like I think that's just a bad user pattern.
0:51:42I think it's bad for your brain because it's like, oh, now I've just made myself aware of a bunch of stuff that I'm not actually dealing with.
0:51:52And I provided this kind of pseudo relief of having gotten rid of some things that I'm not going to respond to.
0:52:00But I think this is encouraging a bad user behavior.
0:52:04It feels like progress, but isn't really.
0:52:07I agree with you, but the problem is people are doing this.
0:52:10And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I get it.
0:52:12So it's like if people are doing it and now the genie is 100% out of the bottle on this, how can we at least make it easier for people to do the thing they're already doing?
0:52:22No, I disagree.
0:52:23Slack should be having their whole design be around like when you open up Slack, it shouldn't let you see anything.
0:52:28There should be a message on screen and it should say, do you have 20 minutes to actually deal with Slack and try to respond to some of these messages?
0:52:35And if you say no, then it just quits the app and says, come back later when you do.
0:52:40Like that's what the user interface should be.
0:52:41Yeah.
0:52:42Like this kind of like, oh, I'm going to quick check.
0:52:44This is exactly what I mean by TikTok-trification or in this case, Tinder-ification.
0:52:49I guarantee they're like interaction metrics will go up, but I don't think that's the same thing as making Slack actually better.
0:52:59Like I think this will increase engagement with Slack, but that is not the same thing as people getting useful work done in Slack or people feeling better about having used the app or actually like getting things out of their side of the court and turning projects around.
0:53:17So that's my specific complaint here.
0:53:20That comes down from the broader thing of like, why do certain user interface elements get adopted and spread is because they seem to be doing good things, but they are actually doing bad things.
0:53:33And so I have not gone on the journey with you.
0:53:36I don't like this at all.
0:53:37I hate it.
0:53:38Yeah.
0:53:38There was something as like, so funny too.
0:53:41Like Tinder is just triage for humans, which is like such a weird, when you think about it that way.
0:53:48Such a strange thought, right?
0:53:49You're just triaging people.
0:53:52Don't use Tinder.
0:53:53Well, I'm not going to say that, you know.
0:53:55Pro tip, get married 10 years ago.
0:53:58The best time to plan to marriage is 10 years ago.
0:54:01The second best time is now.
0:54:02You know what time it is, Mike?
0:54:06It's time to review your time.
0:54:09It's the January Mike time tracking review.
0:54:12Indeed.
0:54:13So I was thinking about this on Unconnected.
0:54:16A few times a year we do roasts.
0:54:18We like roast each other.
0:54:19Like maybe it'll be like a home screen or desktop background or whatever.
0:54:24We do like little roasts of each other.
0:54:25And I feel like this is like roast Mike's time.
0:54:29And that's what you get to do.
0:54:31We're giving you the ability to roast me.
0:54:33I think that's too harsh.
0:54:35It gives you the opportunity to do it if you want to.
0:54:38Yeah.
0:54:39You know?
0:54:39Because a roast can also be helpful.
0:54:42Yeah, but that's no fun.
0:54:43That's no one shows up to a roast because they're like, oh, I can't wait to see this
0:54:46person complimented, right?
0:54:48That's not what a roast is for.
0:54:49No.
0:54:50So I've created a graphic, which is from Timery showing my year over year time
0:54:57tracking from 23 to 22.
0:55:00I guess I could maybe start with some top line stuff and then maybe you could pick
0:55:05into some things that you'd be interested in hearing me explain.
0:55:08Well, I'll say straight away, right?
0:55:09So we've done this multiple years.
0:55:11Yep.
0:55:12This is also why like I refuse to think of this as a roast because some years you
0:55:17show me your numbers and it's a real example of the inside versus outside
0:55:23experience where for you, it seems like there is something that is so obviously
0:55:27different from the two years that to me from the outside, it's a bit like, what's
0:55:31the major difference here between these two things?
0:55:33Like it's not always obvious, like what has caught your attention.
0:55:36But this has to be one of the most obvious differences I've ever seen
0:55:41between two different years from 2022 to 2023.
0:55:45The two massive changes are weekend and podcast editing.
0:55:51Like that's just big obvious changes in what your year was like.
0:55:54I have some huge changes to introduce you to later on in the discussion, but I will
0:55:59agree with you.
0:55:59So if you guess top line stuff, there is a pretty large increase in hours tracked
0:56:06year over year.
0:56:06Oh, wow.
0:56:07I didn't even notice that.
0:56:08Yeah.
0:56:08Yeah.
0:56:09But the biggest contributor to that is weekend.
0:56:12So something I have started doing starting last year and I have something in it for
0:56:17my 24 tracking as well is bringing something related to my yearly theme into
0:56:23my time tracking to be able to give me more data that I am achieving or not my
0:56:28theme.
0:56:28And I brought weekend in.
0:56:31Now what I didn't do here was just track my weekends, right?
0:56:36Like it's Saturday morning.
0:56:37Start that tracker.
0:56:39That's not what it was.
0:56:41That's the rare case where you could pre fill out the time tracker for the year at
0:56:47the start of the year.
0:56:48You could just put in all the weekend entries.
0:56:49Look at this increase.
0:56:51I was tracking things that I was purposely doing with the mindset of the year of the
0:56:58weekend.
0:56:58Okay.
0:56:59It was the spirit of the weekend you were tracking.
0:57:00Yeah, exactly.
0:57:01So let's say it was spending time with friends that I had purposefully made a point of
0:57:10doing, which came from the idea of you should be doing this, right?
0:57:14That like there was something in my theme, which I was then bringing into the world.
0:57:19And so like this could also be like if I worked on Saturday and I took time off on
0:57:25Tuesday, I would track that time because that was a purposeful change that I was
0:57:30looking to make because of the year of the weekend where previously I would have
0:57:35worked the Saturday and then just not taken any time off for it.
0:57:37So like I wasn't crediting myself for what I had done.
0:57:40And this is also like, oh, you know, like I'm going to spend some time at home today
0:57:45rather than going to the studio.
0:57:47I can track that as the year of the weekend.
0:57:49That's a thing that I really wanted to do.
0:57:51And so like this is things that I was making a conscious decision that I would not
0:57:56have done otherwise.
0:57:57They got tracked as weekend time.
0:57:59And so there's about three hundred hours there, which kind of equates for the bulk of
0:58:04the increase year over year.
0:58:06So I feel pretty good about that.
0:58:08And you'll see at the bottom air traffic control.
0:58:11Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.
0:58:12Project air traffic control.
0:58:13So that was when I started this project.
0:58:15And like so now for twenty twenty four, my year of people kind of thing that I'm
0:58:20tracking is these air traffic control meetings.
0:58:24I mean, me and my assistant are getting my week in order each week.
0:58:27So that will be a thing that will continue to tick up in my twenty twenty four.
0:58:31I'm more add in here, but I'm continuing to track activities that were from like the year
0:58:37of the weekend. I'm trying to keep that mentality going.
0:58:40And so I continue to track things like that, although I expect the hours to drop as these
0:58:46things just become more integrated into my life.
0:58:48But when I am doing something very specific for that reason, it's going to go into the
0:58:53weekend timer.
0:58:54OK, so you're keeping the weekend timer going forward.
0:58:57Yeah, because I was going to ask, like, oh, you're going to have a like a year of people
0:59:00timer, but it feels like there's actually quite a lot of overlap between that and the
0:59:03weekend. Like it's there's some similar ideas there.
0:59:05And also it's stitched into so much other stuff.
0:59:09Oh, OK.
0:59:10So it'd be too hard to track that.
0:59:12But, you know, should I be running a Cortex brand admin timer or should I be running a
0:59:17people like it's too complicated.
0:59:19It gets into the classic question that people like, do you run multiple timers?
0:59:23Like how do you deal it with when you're running two things at one time?
0:59:25And the answer is don't don't ever do that.
0:59:27Yeah, just choose.
0:59:28OK, that that makes sense.
0:59:30This data is one of the reasons that I track my time, because what I like about time
0:59:36tracking is accountability and information.
0:59:39So like when I am working by turning on a timer, I am indicating to myself that I am
0:59:46working and if the timer is running, I should be doing what I say I'm supposed to be
0:59:51doing. And if I notice that I've stopped, then I'll turn off my timer.
0:59:55You know, like it's very normal.
0:59:56You're working on something and you get distracted.
0:59:59And then there will come a point where I realize that and I'm like, right, timer goes
1:00:02off and I'm kind of indicating to myself that it's OK to do this other thing that I now
1:00:09want to do instead. Or I will take that as a moment to be like, whoa, hang on a minute.
1:00:13You're supposed to be working. Go back to the thing you're supposed to be doing.
1:00:15So that like accountability is very helpful for me.
1:00:18But I also love the information.
1:00:20I love looking at this year over year stuff and seeing like, did I get out of the year
1:00:26what I set? Like it's these things are very linked for me with themes.
1:00:30Like, can I look at my year's data and be like, oh, I can see these changes that I have
1:00:37actually made. I can see that these were changes that happened in my life that either I
1:00:41made or things happened to me.
1:00:43And it gives me an idea of being able to look at a very top level to be like, did I have
1:00:49the year that I wanted and why could that be?
1:00:51So it's like good information to have to like reinforce if the changes that I'm making are
1:00:57reflected in the hours that I'm spending.
1:00:59And I like that kind of stuff.
1:01:01So this has become these like year over year comparisons has become one of the main
1:01:05reasons that I continue to do time tracking.
1:01:08It totally makes sense as a tool of intentionality in that way.
1:01:12And especially because you are more diligent and less sloppy about the time tracking than
1:01:17I am with this kind of stuff.
1:01:18So you have meaningful year over year data to compare.
1:01:22And like there's a way in which if I could magic it into existence, I would love to also
1:01:27be able to do like the year over year comparisons.
1:01:30I'm just like I'm not quite as diligent with it as you are, but I use it in the same way as
1:01:35like this intentionality tool.
1:01:37So, yeah, it's really useful in that way to like, like you said, notice when you have
1:01:44diverted from what your intention was.
1:01:48That's like the great, oh, it sounds so dumb, but that ability to go, oh, I have to stop
1:01:53this reading timer because I'm actually just checking my email on my phone.
1:01:59I'm busy tendering on Slack right now.
1:02:01I'm not actually reading this book.
1:02:02Right. Like I have to stop this reading timer.
1:02:04And then like it's surprisingly useful in the little day to day moments of life of
1:02:10noticing what it is that you're actually doing.
1:02:13Yeah.
1:02:14All right. So what's going on with all that podcast editing time, Mike?
1:02:16Where has it disappeared to?
1:02:18Well, this is one of the things where like this year there's a good decrease, right, from
1:02:22two hundred nineteen hours to one hundred and forty three hours.
1:02:26So that's dropping upgrade, I think was this is where I saw a full year of that because
1:02:31it was something I stopped like half way through twenty twenty two.
1:02:34Right.
1:02:35Right. I'm really keen to see what twenty twenty four looks like because the majority of
1:02:41what's left here is Cortex.
1:02:43So I expect I'll probably lose over a hundred hours year over year.
1:02:48OK, so you think the majority of this is purely Cortex editing.
1:02:51Interesting.
1:02:51Oh, yeah. I mean, I only edit Cortex and the pen addict and the pen addict takes ten
1:02:56minutes once a week.
1:02:58So the majority of that is Cortex, but I don't expect it to disappear.
1:03:02Right. Because I still call editing what I'm doing with like the assembly of the show and
1:03:07the posting of the show and all that kind of stuff.
1:03:09So, yeah, that makes sense.
1:03:10It's still going to be in there, but it's going to be a big chunk taken out of it for
1:03:14sure. And, you know, there is also a decrease in it year over year because there's also
1:03:19just like a decrease year over year.
1:03:21And obviously the amount of episodes I produced from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three.
1:03:25Exactly sure why that is that you can see my podcast recording hours are down.
1:03:29I guess I did make some changes.
1:03:31So I took some shows that changed their scheduling rather than like weekly or whatever
1:03:36went to monthly, like stuff like that, which I'm always kind of tweaking those kinds of
1:03:40things. And so that's why like podcast recording and show prep both went down because
1:03:46they will go down or up together.
1:03:48Where now podcast editing over the last two years has been divorced from that because
1:03:53I've made much larger changes to what I'm editing.
1:03:57So that's kind of become uncoupled from the recording and prep numbers where previously
1:04:04the three of those went completely hand in hand.
1:04:07But that day it was going to be weird over the last two years.
1:04:10And so really it will be from twenty twenty four onwards that those will be locked
1:04:15together again because I'm not expecting to make any changes to editing or whatever.
1:04:19That makes sense. I think the biggest change is Cossacks brand.
1:04:23Yeah. Yeah. I'm just looking through the rest of this and I'm just noticing more and
1:04:28more like, oh, there's actually quite a number of changes here that didn't jump out to
1:04:31me as obviously is those first two.
1:04:33So tell me about what's going on with Cortex brand in twenty twenty one.
1:04:37Everything to Cortex brand was all just in one timer.
1:04:41And then at the end of twenty twenty two, I kind of split it out and created Cortex
1:04:46brand product design as well as Cortex brand admin.
1:04:49And I tracked about one hundred and five hours of time, one hundred five hours of work
1:04:55in twenty twenty two.
1:04:56Then in twenty twenty three, I also introduced Cortex brand marketing.
1:05:02And now between admin design and marketing, I tracked about three hundred hours of work
1:05:08in twenty twenty three compared to the one hundred in twenty twenty two.
1:05:13Big difference. Yeah, there's no surprise, but that is a huge difference.
1:05:18That's a lot of hours to add.
1:05:20So that is, I think, the biggest meaningful change that I see in my just like pure work
1:05:25hours this year. It's why even though some stuff has reduced in like the podcasting
1:05:31stuff, my overall hours have stayed relatively the same of work.
1:05:36Right. Because if you take the weekend hours out of that, the work hours have remained
1:05:41the same, if not increased, because I have added about two hundred hours of work this
1:05:46year on top of the things that I was doing before.
1:05:49But this is all by design.
1:05:51It's not an accident and I'm happy about it.
1:05:53I don't look at that and I'm like, oh, it's too much.
1:05:55This is exactly what I wanted.
1:05:57And I feel like the results of it have borne out and I'm happy with the effort.
1:06:02I was kind of wondering for myself, I was thinking, oh, should I break out Cortex brand
1:06:06versus Cortex podcast stuff?
1:06:08Oh, one hundred percent you should.
1:06:10Yes. Yeah.
1:06:11I'm not convinced for me it matters as much.
1:06:14So I know people do this differently.
1:06:16So like my co-founder, Relay Steven, he tracks very differently to me and he finds my
1:06:22way of tracking to be very strange.
1:06:24So like what does he do?
1:06:25So I track podcast recording and then what you don't see in this number is I have a tag
1:06:29for each show. So I can also see how much time I spent per show by doing a different
1:06:34report where Steven will track for Mac power users.
1:06:38He just tracks everything.
1:06:39So if he's prepping, if he's recording, if he's editing, it's all just Mac power users.
1:06:44That to me seems wrong.
1:06:46I track by task and then have a tag if there is a property related to that task and he
1:06:54finds mine to be strange.
1:06:55So it's just like a very personal thing where like I want to know more about how much I'm
1:06:59recording is like the top line and how much I'm spending per show.
1:07:03Like for me, I don't really feel like I need that as the most important statistic.
1:07:08I like to know more about like the type of work that I'm doing, not what it's for.
1:07:12Yeah, maybe. I feel like this is a byproduct of the number of shows that you do.
1:07:16Yeah, probably.
1:07:17Even just for me thinking like I just have a timer called Cortex.
1:07:22Am I doing anything Cortex related that goes from we're talking right now to I'm
1:07:29updating spreadsheets for the business?
1:07:31It's all just the Cortex timer.
1:07:32To me, that doesn't make any sense, right?
1:07:34Like for me, prepping for an episode of Cortex could not be more different to working
1:07:41on the email newsletter, right?
1:07:42Like those things, like I just couldn't imagine tracking them as the same work.
1:07:47But this is why I thought about it for a moment and then I talked myself out of it
1:07:52because the information to me is really much more like how much of my life does
1:07:59Cortex take up?
1:08:00It's all one connected blob for me, whereas you have shared tasks that are similar
1:08:08across multiple things.
1:08:09But even for you, though, like the idea that you track everything related to the
1:08:12podcast has been one thing.
1:08:13While it's not my style, I understand why somebody does it.
1:08:16But then to be like when I'm working on my spreadsheets, it's effectively the
1:08:22same bucket as when I'm sitting here recording with you.
1:08:24Like that to me just feels wrong.
1:08:26I find that to be really odd.
1:08:27I can understand why.
1:08:29I think it's partly because the real division in my life for work is what I
1:08:33think of as the core work, which is usually like heavy like research and writing work.
1:08:37And then I have like two layers of lighter work, which is on top of that.
1:08:42So it's like video editing, podcast preparation, podcast recording, like
1:08:47working on spreadsheets.
1:08:48It's all like medium level work.
1:08:50And then the light level work is tinder-ing on Slack, I guess.
1:08:53Like, oh, like that's, that's my light level work.
1:08:55And so like, I'm doing a level of categorization that's like meta on that
1:09:01level of like, I care about the relationship of these three things.
1:09:05And for me, something like writing and research is just so fundamentally
1:09:12different from everything else that I do work-wise.
1:09:15I really care about the ratio of this to everything else.
1:09:20So I think it's a lot easier for me to compress the everything else into much
1:09:24broader buckets of like, I just want a cortex bucket.
1:09:27I just want a video editing bucket and I don't really need things
1:09:33that are much granular than that.
1:09:34But I could see, depending on how this year goes at the end of it, maybe
1:09:39deciding like, oh, I do need to break out Cortex brand from the Cortex podcast.
1:09:44But I think for the moment, I'm still okay not doing that.
1:09:47But yeah, it's interesting to see how other people do it.
1:09:50And there is a funny thing where to me, like I find looking at your system,
1:09:53it's almost absurdly broken down and also absurdly broad, like podcast
1:10:01recording with 400 hours is almost, it's like a hilarious number.
1:10:04But again, that's just a function of this report.
1:10:06Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
1:10:08Like I can make a report that tells me the stuff that I would need to know there.
1:10:14And like, I make those reports for when they're important to me.
1:10:16But the majority of time, I don't need that information.
1:10:21But like, I can give it to you right here.
1:10:24Here we go.
1:10:25All right.
1:10:26So just for the sake of comparing now, I've pulled the 2022 and 2023 podcast
1:10:31recording numbers based on show.
1:10:34See, we can also see upgrade very consistent, like 119 hours.
1:10:40I feel like this is almost an indecent level of information
1:10:43about how my expense is time.
1:10:45I mean, but this part is very findable, right?
1:10:48Because like you can see the runtime of shows.
1:10:50Oh, I know, I know.
1:10:51But there's just something funny about it.
1:10:53It's like, oh, we've almost drilled down to a level where I'm slightly uncomfortable.
1:10:56Yeah.
1:10:58Look at all that upgrade time.
1:11:00Connected went from 110 to 90 hours.
1:11:05I think I took more episodes off this year.
1:11:06Yeah, I was going to say, you didn't change the number of episodes, but
1:11:09you just were on fewer episodes.
1:11:11Yes.
1:11:12The pen addict, similar, Cortex was more, which I expected because we did more
1:11:16episodes, not by a lot more, which is interesting, but yeah, it's actually funny
1:11:20that Cortex number is bigger, but it's not as much bigger as I would have expected.
1:11:25Cortex has a weird outlying though, is I am tracking from the
1:11:29moment we start talking.
1:11:30Okay.
1:11:31That makes sense.
1:11:32Right.
1:11:32So like that one is wobbly of like maybe in 2022, we were just way more chatty.
1:11:38Yeah.
1:11:39Even though we recorded more episodes in 2023.
1:11:41I guess, I don't know if I should even say this, right?
1:11:46Cause I don't want to make you self-conscious.
1:11:48One of the things that I track of a timer, which is called social
1:11:55colon audio visual, right?
1:11:58So am I talking to someone basically like on a phone call or on a video chat?
1:12:03And the reason I keep track of a couple of little social timers, because I'm just
1:12:08like really bad at it and I feel like I shouldn't let this number get under like
1:12:121% of my total time, so I just want to keep an eye on like, have I just spoken
1:12:17socially to someone and when we start our calls for Cortex, sometimes I'm like,
1:12:23Ooh, if we're actually just chatting, I can flip on that social timer.
1:12:27That is the main way we maintain our friendship.
1:12:30Yeah, it is.
1:12:31But I'm also, I'm totally juicing those social AV numbers.
1:12:35Like that's 100% what I'm doing.
1:12:37No, you're not juicing, it's accurate.
1:12:38Like most of the conversation, like me and Grey will talk for multiple
1:12:42hours outside of the recording.
1:12:44The vast majority, we're just like shooting the breeze.
1:12:47Like we're not, you know, we're just like hanging out.
1:12:49So I think that it's perfectly acceptable.
1:12:52I still acknowledge like, I'm kind of juicing these numbers mainly because
1:12:56what I really want to do is encourage me to have more of this time, which means
1:13:01like, Oh, I should try to call and talk to someone, right?
1:13:04And I'm cheating it because it's like, ah, we were going to do the
1:13:07call for recording anyway.
1:13:08That's true.
1:13:09Yeah.
1:13:09Don't use me to make your chart go up.
1:13:12Right.
1:13:13But that's exactly what I'm using you for.
1:13:14It's like, Oh, I've got these great AV numbers now.
1:13:17Amazing.
1:13:18So yeah, this is the information I can draw if I want to.
1:13:21But for me, this granularity is good to have, but I only really use it at one
1:13:27time, which is we generate like a spreadsheet every year, which looks at
1:13:33the hours I spent per show, the revenue I made per show, working out my hourly
1:13:38rate that I make from each, you know, just, it's like a good piece of information
1:13:43to look at it's one of those charts though, where it can sometimes help
1:13:47inform stuff, but you also have to like take things with a real grain of salt too.
1:13:52Oh yeah.
1:13:53Yeah.
1:13:53Yeah.
1:13:53Because it would say otherwise like, Oh, all I should record is
1:13:56ungenius because the show is like 10 minutes long and we have like an
1:14:01ad on each episode and Steven does all the prep work, but it doesn't work like that.
1:14:06Like in theory, yes, if we just did ungenius, we'd be raking it in.
1:14:10And also if the episodes were two hours long rather than 10 minutes long.
1:14:13But I know that realistically, that's not how that works.
1:14:16Right.
1:14:16So that's, we have a lot of this stuff.
1:14:18You still have to apply, it's the same with the time tracking,
1:14:21just the raw time tracking.
1:14:22It's just to apply what you know about your work to overlap.
1:14:26This is just a data point.
1:14:27It's not a Bible.
1:14:29I'm always trying to convey this idea, which I think is really hard for people.
1:14:33Especially if you're listening to us and you are not inclined this way, right?
1:14:37Where you're not like, I'm going to time track all the time, right?
1:14:39It just seems like it's very strange behavior.
1:14:41It's very easy to over assume the importance put on these things.
1:14:46And I think that the kind of people who are naturally inclined to be tracking all
1:14:53of this kind of stuff or making spreadsheets, if you're inclined that way,
1:14:57your tendency will be to put too much emphasis on this data.
1:15:00So like, I'm always trying to express this idea that you have to both take the data
1:15:07seriously and not seriously at all.
1:15:11And the closest I've ever come, or the way it sort of feels in my head is it's a bit
1:15:16like you're the king and you have this advisor and the advisor is really smart,
1:15:23but he's literally never left the library.
1:15:26And so like you as the king have actually traveled around your kingdom and like,
1:15:31you know, a bunch of things out in the world that are difficult to quantify.
1:15:34And so like, it's important to listen to your advisor who is the spreadsheet in
1:15:40this metaphor or the time tracking in this metaphor or the like your hourly rate in
1:15:44this metaphor, but it's also extremely important to always remember that guy
1:15:50never leaves the library.
1:15:51He doesn't know anything about the actual real world.
1:15:55And so you can totally blow off his very strong advice all the time because there's
1:16:01a huge amount of context that's just missing.
1:16:03But I think it's really hard to have the balance between those two things to both
1:16:09be the person who's pedantic enough to keep all of these records like the
1:16:14librarian advisor, but is also like out in the world in the way that like the
1:16:21person running the empire has to be.
1:16:22Well, yeah, that's my time tracking over the year.
1:16:25I feel like everything else is within kind of the margins that I would expect,
1:16:29like without too much change to them.
1:16:32There's maybe some things that are a few hours here or there.
1:16:34I guess what actually one that I did want to point out was how sponsors
1:16:38dropped from 32 hours to six.
1:16:40Yeah, that was the other big one that I noticed there.
1:16:43Yeah.
1:16:43Which is just confirming the thing that we've been working on for years for
1:16:47me to reduce that from my plate.
1:16:49I think the other thing that's just funny from a data perspective is year
1:16:54over year, how many things that you track are within plus or minus five hours each
1:17:01year, right?
1:17:01It's like you've tracked 1500 or 1800 hours, but you still have five, six, seven
1:17:08things that are like within five hours.
1:17:11The one that particularly catches my attention here is you've got mega studio
1:17:15and it's like five hours, 50 minutes, one year, five hours, 21 minutes the next
1:17:20year, like how is it so close?
1:17:22Workflows, one hour, 41 minutes, one hour, 12 minutes.
1:17:27But the other one that really catches my attention is like podcastathon is within
1:17:33Yeah, that's weird.
1:17:33one hour, like both years.
1:17:37It's 69 and 68 hours.
1:17:40The thing that's strange to me is the event itself increased by 50% in runtime.
1:17:46Like looking at this, it feels to me like there's some kind of mathematical
1:17:53or universal law in action here that I don't know about.
1:17:57Like how is it that you can track whatever it is, 20 different categories
1:18:02and a surprising number of them are within just a few percent of where they
1:18:09were last year, even though the number of hours being tracked is huge.
1:18:13It just, it feels like there's some phenomenon I don't know about that
1:18:16has a name that explains this.
1:18:17If anyone knows what that is, please tell us in feedback.
1:18:20Creature of habit syndrome or something like that.
1:18:23I don't know.
1:18:24I was hoping for something more exotic, but you're probably right.
1:18:28This episode is supported in part by listeners like you who subscribe to More
1:18:33Texts.
1:18:33If you sign up today at getmoretext.com, you'll get yourself longer ad free
1:18:39episodes of each and every episode of Cortex.
1:18:42You get ad free listening to the entire back catalog of content.
1:18:47All of our RPG and text adventure specials, they're available to you in
1:18:51their very own More Texts specials feed for easy listening.
1:18:55This alone, just these specials is over 25 hours of bonus content that we have
1:19:01published so far with more to come as well as access to our members, discords,
1:19:06exclusive wallpapers, behind the scenes content, and so much more.
1:19:09People who subscribe to More Texts, the More Texans, they get additional
1:19:13content with every single episode.
1:19:15On today's show, me and Gray are going to be talking about our plans to try and
1:19:20grab a vision pro headset when it goes on sale and to give our reactions to
1:19:25exactly the way that Apple decided to announce this to the world.
1:19:27But previous More Texts segments, they've been super different.
1:19:30We have covered the Cortex brand yearly themes in More Texts.
1:19:33We spoken about some behind the scenes conversation about both the show and
1:19:36Cortex brand.
1:19:37We talk about media and games that we've been enjoying and so much more.
1:19:41All of these segments are available to you.
1:19:44If you sign up now, you can very easily go back to any episode and listen to the
1:19:48bonus segment that we've been doing since June 2020, featuring over 13 hours of
1:19:53content on top of the 25 hours of standalone bonus material.
1:19:57Go and check this out for yourself today and get longer ad free episodes at
1:20:02getmoretexts.com.
1:20:03If you enjoy this show and you think to yourself, I would love some more of it.
1:20:07There is.
1:20:08It's at getmoretexts.com.
1:20:11All right, before we wrap up today, I have a little bit of Cortex brand follow up.
1:20:15We need to revisit a bet that we made.
1:20:17So in episode 145 in August of last year, we spoke about the fact that we had just
1:20:25decided to make a really big bet with ordering Sidekick Notepad stock.
1:20:30Yeah.
1:20:31To the point where we would have more stock than we've ever had in any product
1:20:36ever before, far past what we were comfortable ordering, way more investment
1:20:42than we were comfortable making.
1:20:44But we were doing that because you were working on a video that you were going to
1:20:49put up for the end of the year.
1:20:51And we wanted to be prepared for the like worst case scenario that we would go out
1:20:58of stock after the promo video went up, which had happened both times you'd done
1:21:02this with the journal.
1:21:03Well, the video went up.
1:21:05Before you say another word, can I just say, like, even just hearing you describe
1:21:13this situation, again, I have a physical tightening in my chest thinking about
1:21:19this.
1:21:19Well, okay, so obviously we're on the other side of this bet and we know how it went.
1:21:24Sometimes we've talked about how there are kind of stresses in self-employment that
1:21:30are just fundamentally different from being employed.
1:21:34And I think this bet and working on the promotion of this product are one of the
1:21:41times that I have felt that most keenly in a different way when you're just on your
1:21:47own and you are like making important financial decisions about things and the
1:21:54pressure is on and there's like, there's nobody else here.
1:21:58Like it's just you being self-employed doing a thing.
1:22:02I just really felt it from the moment we put in that order until the time that I was
1:22:09finally able to press publish on that video.
1:22:12That was just a like grinding stress of self-employment time from my perspective.
1:22:19This is a unique kind of unpleasantness that is just different from the numerous
1:22:29kinds of unpleasantness I also experienced being employed.
1:22:33Like they're just different, like they're different kinds of things.
1:22:36What made it different?
1:22:36I guess the difference that I'm trying to express is the lack of structure around
1:22:42you.
1:22:42I think that's really what it is.
1:22:45Like the maximum stress of being employed is the stress of being
1:22:49ejected from that structure.
1:22:51That's when I had my worst time as a teacher, right?
1:22:54The underlying stress there was they're going to fire me.
1:22:58It's the stress of expulsion, but you have to go to like really the next level of,
1:23:07"Oh, if I make a bad decision or if I do a bad job, it's like catastrophic for the
1:23:14organization in which I exist."
1:23:15Like that's just like a very different kind of thing.
1:23:19And so that's the flip side of the like the self-employment stress is you can make
1:23:25decisions or you can do things that are just very bad for the organization in which
1:23:30you exist because the organization is basically just you.
1:23:33And so that's why like I just really felt it.
1:23:38Like I swear from the moment that you said like, "Okay, we placed the order."
1:23:41It's like, "Ah, here comes the stress."
1:23:44This isn't going to change anything, but I felt exactly the same.
1:23:48I remember the exact moment when we were sitting around your kitchen table and we
1:23:54made the decision, my life changed at that moment and it remained that way until early
1:24:00December.
1:24:00So for like August to December, I had a low level anxiety the entire time.
1:24:09The day did not go by where I was freaking out about the decision that we had made.
1:24:15I'll also say between us, I also acknowledge that you in many ways were in the worst
1:24:22position because at least I knew on a day to day basis like, "What am I up to?"
1:24:27You were basically existing in the dark of like, "I wonder what Gray's done today."
1:24:32Right?
1:24:32Where at least Gray knows what he's done today.
1:24:34Right?
1:24:35Where you were much more in the dark.
1:24:36Well, okay.
1:24:37So yes, I was, but this was on your shoulders.
1:24:41That's what you had that was different to me.
1:24:43The result of this was the quality of the product you produced.
1:24:47Right?
1:24:48If you did a bad job making this video, that is on you.
1:24:53It's not on me.
1:24:55Right?
1:24:55Because like that is your contribution there.
1:24:58It was like you had to make a good product, but if you messed it up or if like you
1:25:04didn't put the effort in and it resulted in poor sales, that is a thing where we'd
1:25:10have to look at forever and be like, "Oh yeah, because that was because the video
1:25:14wasn't good enough."
1:25:15Yeah.
1:25:16Right?
1:25:16So like that is what you had that was different to me.
1:25:20Where like I tried to be as helpful as possible during the process, but I don't
1:25:25have what you have.
1:25:26Like I don't have the skills that you have.
1:25:28I don't have the ability to write something the way that you do.
1:25:32And so ultimately the quality of the end product was on you.
1:25:38And so like that puts the stress on you, which I'm sure you felt.
1:25:40But I'm saying like, you say it's bad for me because I didn't have control.
1:25:45Well, I acknowledge it's bad for you because it was on your shoulders.
1:25:48Right.
1:25:49Because I did have control.
1:25:50Yeah.
1:25:50It's the two sides of the same coin, but it's just a thing that I was really aware
1:25:55of.
1:25:55Like, ah, this is like the real stress of self-employment.
1:25:59There's like this low level thing that, I mean, ultimately is there all the time when
1:26:06you're self-employed.
1:26:07It's always in the background like a little, but this is one of the times where it
1:26:11really felt like it just got ramped up.
1:26:13Well, the difference is, is because it's a thing that we don't deal in, in that there
1:26:18was a large capital expenditure to make this bet, where usually the types of things
1:26:23that we do don't have that.
1:26:26Like you can either succeed or fail and that will make an impact on the other end.
1:26:30Yeah.
1:26:31But it's not, that failure would not then end up in, well, we have too much stock and
1:26:38we're going to pay the price for that.
1:26:39And we've got to, by any means necessary, sell it.
1:26:43And like that kind of desperation, I'm sure sucks.
1:26:48And actually we have been in a version of that in the past, but not to the level that
1:26:53would have been financially.
1:26:55And also like, what does that say about the product, right?
1:27:01Like that we would produce a video that hundreds of thousands of people would see
1:27:04and they didn't want it.
1:27:06That was also like one of the things that I think I was having a hard time expressing
1:27:09when I was talking to you sometimes is like the Sidekicks and Interesting product.
1:27:15I found it a tricky video because in my discussions with people in person, it
1:27:23really did have like quite a bifurcated response where some people just go like,
1:27:28I don't know why I would ever use that.
1:27:30And some people go, Oh my God, I want that right now.
1:27:33Like I know exactly where that fits in my life.
1:27:36So those people in some sense are like, they're pre-set, but I was thinking of
1:27:40someone like my dad, I was actually thinking a bunch about with this, where
1:27:46when I first showed him the Sidekick notepad, he was skeptical of it, which I
1:27:51found very surprising because like when I think of my dad, when I was a kid and
1:27:56going to his office, he was one of those guys who had one of those giant calendars
1:28:00on his desk, like was working on top of the paper calendar.
1:28:03So it was like, Dad, it's like that, but smaller.
1:28:06Like I know this is a thing that you would like.
1:28:09And he eventually turned around on it and decided like, Oh no, I
1:28:12do really do like it, it's useful.
1:28:14It's like, yes, obviously that's for you.
1:28:15And so I was just thinking a lot about like the marginal person, like how do
1:28:20you try to demonstrate quickly to the marginal person that there's something
1:28:23that's interesting here to them where they don't know that they would like it.
1:28:27But yeah, so it's just like it had this property of people respond immediately
1:28:33that they know that they want it, immediately that they don't.
1:28:35And then there's a group of people who don't know that they
1:28:37do really want this thing.
1:28:38And it just made the messaging much trickier as opposed to the theme
1:28:44system journal where it's more like, I can tell you a story about what this thing is for.
1:28:48Like that's just obviously how you go about it.
1:28:50I agree with you, but I still, my kind of thinking of why I believe this
1:28:55product would be successful and I thought the video could be and would be
1:28:58successful is while you have the hurdle of like this product is made in a
1:29:03particular way and it has a particular use idea and it's a premium price product.
1:29:08And so like you've got those three things, but I believe it is easier to
1:29:13see yourself as a user of this product in the journal because for the theme
1:29:17system journal, if you don't know about yearly themes, like you haven't
1:29:21really had that much exposure to it.
1:29:23In the course of a 10 minute video, you have to accept to life
1:29:30change, then go to checkout.
1:29:32Like that is quite a jump, I think.
1:29:35No, I completely agree.
1:29:36We've talked about this before with this as a product is it's more like a
1:29:39look at it and understand it product.
1:29:41Yep.
1:29:41Perversely, that narrative of I need to convince you of a life change in 10
1:29:46minutes provides more structure for what is the story of this video going to be.
1:29:53Whereas the Sidekick, which is a much more direct product, has less of a
1:30:00predestined structure for what should a promotional video for this look like,
1:30:05which is why it's harder.
1:30:07So there's like, there's this weird inverse, right?
1:30:09Like Sidekick in many ways is an easier sell, but a harder video.
1:30:15And the theme system journal is kind of a harder sell, but an easier video
1:30:19in terms of the production, because there's a, there's like a necessary
1:30:23story here, but that also just didn't help at all with the like, what am I
1:30:28going to do?
1:30:29And I definitely had many days where I was just like sitting in a room and
1:30:34thinking, I'm like, am I going to do this?
1:30:36And you do this like horrible writer thing where you like write out a bunch
1:30:39of stuff and then you go, it's all terrible.
1:30:41And you digitally scrunch it up and throw it away.
1:30:43Throw your typewriter at the wall.
1:30:44I'm useless.
1:30:46I can't do this.
1:30:48When you have done that for a long period of time, you are left in the
1:30:53position where even when you go to press the publish button, it's like, I
1:30:58don't understand this anymore.
1:30:59Like I don't even know how to perceive this thing that I have made.
1:31:02I'm just going to ship it out there and see how it does.
1:31:06And I think it come to the end of it.
1:31:08I was in somewhat of a similar boat to you in that I really liked the video.
1:31:13I thought it was very good.
1:31:15I was very happy with how it told the story of the product, but I still wasn't
1:31:20sure.
1:31:21Yeah.
1:31:22Where with the journal videos, for all of the reasons that you mentioned.
1:31:27You see, as I'm saying that, I feel like I don't agree with myself.
1:31:31I was going to say I felt more sure.
1:31:32But the thing is, it also didn't matter the same.
1:31:36So I think I don't know if I can say that to be true.
1:31:39Like where we were when we had the journals to sell, it just wasn't the
1:31:44same. The price for having the stock wasn't the same.
1:31:46There wasn't so much feeling like it was on the line.
1:31:49And so I don't think I was really thinking in that mindset of like, oh, this
1:31:54is going to do the job, you know, because it wasn't so important.
1:31:57Yeah.
1:31:58We weren't dealing with the problem of the physical volume and costs of
1:32:04thousands of them.
1:32:05Like that wasn't the issue.
1:32:07Like we said, this is a very large bet that was really pushing the edges of
1:32:16our comfort when we made it.
1:32:17Yeah.
1:32:18I think both of us had a little bit of a like, well, we're going to sled down
1:32:22this hill together kind of feeling when we made the final decision.
1:32:25The psychic notepad costs to us over twice the cost price of the journal.
1:32:32Yeah.
1:32:33To produce.
1:32:34So we would have had to have ordered like three times more journals than we've
1:32:40ever ordered to be close to what this came to.
1:32:43And like then I would be worried the same way.
1:32:48Yeah.
1:32:48It's a very different experience.
1:32:51And plus we just, it's from different worlds.
1:32:53Right.
1:32:53When we made the journal promo videos, it was like a time when we couldn't keep
1:32:58the theme system journal in stock at all.
1:33:00And it was like a very different time for us because we were really struggling
1:33:04with catching that eel back then.
1:33:05Like just could not work out how to manufacture it at the scale that we needed
1:33:11to.
1:33:11And it was, it all felt very weird and very different.
1:33:14But all of this is to say the bet really, really paid off.
1:33:19So we had an amount that we were supposed to keep in stock for like a long period
1:33:23of time.
1:33:24And then we ordered the extra for the bump for the video.
1:33:28We sold through all of the extra.
1:33:30We kept selling through and as we appear right now, we're going to go out of stock
1:33:36within the next six weeks, most likely of the Sidekick notepad, which again, we're
1:33:41back to that process again.
1:33:43We're getting more made, but there's been some delays.
1:33:45So we're going to have an out of stock period.
1:33:47That is just, I think what it's like to do this.
1:33:51Coming to terms with this more, there is no such thing as perfection with stock
1:34:00management.
1:34:01And what I've been doing over the last few months is I've been paying attention to
1:34:05brands that I follow more and how they deal with this kind of stuff.
1:34:10And I'm just learning more and more that like companies going out of stock on an
1:34:15item is actually very normal.
1:34:17And I need to kind of just get over myself a little bit with this and like do the
1:34:24best we can, but understand that things happen that you can't prepare for.
1:34:30And I feel happy with what we did because I believe we did the absolute maximum we
1:34:37could do.
1:34:37We did it, right?
1:34:40We couldn't have bought anymore.
1:34:41No, no.
1:34:42In the way that we want to structure our company.
1:34:43Obviously, we could have borrowed money to do it, but I'm not doing that.
1:34:46Oh my God.
1:34:47No, no.
1:34:47You know what I mean?
1:34:48That is the other way we could have done this.
1:34:50We could have got a credit line and done it that way.
1:34:52But I'm not comfortable.
1:34:53I'm not going to do that.
1:34:54No, I'm not going to do that because I want to be able to sleep at night and it was
1:34:58already hard enough.
1:34:59Exactly.
1:34:59If it was like Mr.
1:35:00Bank Man is going to be tapping his watch on January 1st, it'd be like, no.
1:35:05It was bad enough to be responsible to each other, right?
1:35:08That it's mine and your money ultimately, rather than it also being somebody else's
1:35:13money.
1:35:14Like I'm not willing to play in that space right now.
1:35:16That is not a thing that I want to do.
1:35:18But, you know, similarly, the thing that we're going to do that we've not done
1:35:22before is we're going to take pre-orders when we go out of stock.
1:35:26And like that's not a thing that I've wanted to do before.
1:35:29But again, it's like grow up.
1:35:32It's part of logistics.
1:35:35It's part of stock management.
1:35:37We can make it work.
1:35:39And so we're going to do that.
1:35:40But like that is the result of all of this thing.
1:35:42I don't know how you feel, but to me, these past six weeks feels like the
1:35:49biggest success that we've seen as a company.
1:35:53I mean, as the one running the spreadsheets, it's crazy.
1:35:56Like Sidekick has more than doubled the business and its existence this year.
1:36:02Like it's been really quite shocking.
1:36:05And you said a thing about accepting that we're going to run out of stock.
1:36:10There's definitely this part of me, which is like, no, like I will not accept this.
1:36:14With God as my witness, I will never run out of stock again.
1:36:17But yeah, like this is, um, I've got some bad news for you, but it's going to happen.
1:36:24Like, okay.
1:36:24So one of the things that I told myself to try to keep myself sane during the
1:36:28production of the actual video was, okay, we have this huge number of stock.
1:36:32But listen, listen, Gray.
1:36:34Really, we're only trying to sell half this number because we also want to
1:36:40have the stock for all of next year.
1:36:43So there's not so much pressure.
1:36:46And so when it went up and we sold through half the number, I'm like,
1:36:50Oh, thank God.
1:36:51Right.
1:36:51Like what a relief.
1:36:53Thank goodness.
1:36:53But then the sales have not dropped as much as I was expecting.
1:36:59And there's this weird thing where like, I'm looking at all of my estimates for
1:37:04when are we going to run out of stock?
1:37:05And the date very quickly went from like, Oh, we'll run out just before Christmas
1:37:11next year to, well, we'll run out before Halloween.
1:37:14We'll run out before school starts.
1:37:16We're definitely going to run out before the 4th of July.
1:37:19Right.
1:37:19Like now it's like Valentine's day.
1:37:22You're not going to make it to Valentine's day, buddy.
1:37:24And it's like, Oh no.
1:37:25It's such a funny thing because.
1:37:28Updating the numbers.
1:37:29I have this weird feeling like sales, please slow down.
1:37:34Right.
1:37:35But like, obviously as a business person, that's not really what I want at all, but
1:37:40it's just funny how your brain can like play these tricks on you where it's like,
1:37:44wild success has very rapidly turned into like, no, I'm not going to run out of
1:37:49inventory, but we're totally going to run out of inventory.
1:37:52And on top of that, we've had to put in orders for all of the other products
1:37:56because like, there's just been so many sales over the holidays and we did run
1:38:01out of pens and it's like, okay, all of this is just like a by-product of it going
1:38:05extremely well, but it's just very funny that now it's like kind of my
1:38:09responsibility to not run out of stock.
1:38:12I'm like, please slow down sales.
1:38:15It's not going to happen.
1:38:16We're running out, but like we're learning now again.
1:38:18Right.
1:38:19Like I think one of the things that we're taking away from this is, okay, so maybe
1:38:25this year we will focus more on more frequent smaller orders.
1:38:32It hasn't really worked out, but that is kind of what I built this spreadsheet to
1:38:37try to do is like be looking at more frequent smaller orders, but we might need
1:38:42to turn that up and say like, no, even more frequent smaller orders.
1:38:46Yeah.
1:38:46But there is a, there are things to consider and all of that.
1:38:50It's like smaller means more expensive.
1:38:51Yes.
1:38:52So like you've got to find a balance, but this is just the thing that we will spend
1:38:57the rest of the year going through.
1:38:59Cause one of the things about this video and that as an answer, we are still
1:39:02waiting to find, and I don't know when we're going to get it now is, you know,
1:39:07we were selling whatever, you know, a small handful of units of the journal every
1:39:11day when it was just people who listened to this podcast that knew about it.
1:39:15And that would increase by orders of magnitude.
1:39:19Each time you'd release a video, there would be like a noticeable change.
1:39:23And you know, we're now like three or four times more than what that was.
1:39:26So we got like a somewhat reliable daily sales rate, which was increased by the
1:39:32video and the existence of the video keeps the sales coming in and there's also
1:39:37more products in the world.
1:39:38So people see them and it's like, it just kind of perpetuates from there.
1:39:41I want to know what that's going to be for the Sidekick notepad.
1:39:44Yeah.
1:39:45But we don't know because as you say, the sales are, I think still much higher
1:39:50than that number on a daily basis, but we don't know what that number is going to
1:39:54be.
1:39:54And it's going to take longer to find that out because of the existence of us
1:39:58going out of stock.
1:39:59Like it's going to be way into the year.
1:40:02If this year at all, before we actually get that number, cause we just, there's
1:40:08too many variables at play to try and understand what that's going to be.
1:40:11So it's going to be a longer tail thing going into the future.
1:40:15So, yeah, that's what kind of kills the data person in me.
1:40:18It's like, Oh, I want continuous data, right?
1:40:21And I was like, Oh, the moment we switched to pre-sales, like this is a functionally
1:40:24different kind of data set.
1:40:25And like the streak will be broken of having all of these like days in a row
1:40:29where we can try to estimate what are we actually looking at here.
1:40:33So all of this to say the bet paid off our instinct was right.
1:40:38And I feel very good about it.
1:40:42Like I feel very vindicated that this is another product that is successful that
1:40:50people are interested in.
1:40:52And we're getting very good feedback about like that was what the Sidekick
1:40:56Notepad was supposed to be.
1:40:58We have the theme system journal, we have the Sidekick Notepad, and then we
1:41:02have other products.
1:41:03Like that was what I wanted.
1:41:05What I also like about the Sidekick Notepad is it I'm starting to think of it
1:41:10as like a platform now where we've done so much work in the construction of it
1:41:15that we can create other layouts.
1:41:18And it's also really easy from a manufacturing perspective to bundle those
1:41:22together.
1:41:23And so like I feel like great.
1:41:25We have proven the point and now we can further expand this and the existence of
1:41:31the video and the result of the video, the response to the video and what that
1:41:35has meant from sales has like borne that out to be like great.
1:41:39We have another one of these like it's another pillar of the company.
1:41:42We can continue from here.
1:41:43You have every right to feel vindicated.
1:41:46I feel mostly just relieved.
1:41:48I don't think vindication and relief are that far away from each other on the
1:41:52emotional scale.
1:41:53*Laughs*